1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a method and a device for handling synchronization related information, especially for synchronization and updating of portable or mobile terminals, PDA's and other stations having continuously changing databases. All popular mobile devices—handheld computers, mobile phones, pagers, laptop computers—synchronize their data with network applications, desktop calendars, and other locations where information is stored. The synchronization markup language (SyncML) technology is an open specification for data synchronization.
2. Discussion of Related Art
SyncML is used in wireless and wired environments. In general, synchronization takes place between a terminal device (e.g., a mobile phone) and a server device (e.g., an application in a local PC). To be able to understand each other the data transferred between SyncML client (the mobile phone) and SyncML server (the PC) must be coded as a SyncML document. The coding or decoding/parsing of SyncML document is done by separate application components, respectively, that other end-user applications (e.g. a UI application) can use.
Data of portable terminals, such as portable computers, PDA terminals (personal digital assistant), mobile stations or pagers, can be synchronized with network applications, applications of desktop computers or with other databases of the telecommunications system. In particular, data of calendar and e-mail applications are typically synchronized. But also non-ordinary devices will offer synchronization capability. Such a non-ordinary device may be a digital camera able to synchronize pictures with a central picture managing server providing an easy to use upload method to the user of such a digital camera.
Synchronization has been based on the use of different manufacturer-specific protocols which are incompatible. This restricts the use of terminal or data types and often causes troubles to the user. In mobile communication, in particular, it is important that data can be retrieved and updated regardless of the terminal and application used.
To improve synchronization of application data, a language known as synchronized markup language SyncML, which is based on the XML (extensible markup language), has been developed. By using a SyncML synchronization protocol, which employs messages in the SyncML format, data of any application can be synchronized between network terminals of any kind. The SyncML synchronization protocol functions both in wireless and in fixed networks and supports several transmission protocols.
The synchronized markup language (SyncML) standard provides the possibility of a manufacturer independent synchronization protocol. But the capabilities of this standardized synchronization protocol is simultaneously limited due to the standardizing process. So it is not always desired or even possible to use a synchronization coding or decoding component operation in accordance to the synchronization SyncML standard for example in case of using proprietary functionality of certain synchronization applications, if a user may set up and code synchronization related information on one's own or if the user requires special handling of the synchronization related information. But it would nonetheless be advantageous even in such a case to employ the transmitting and receiving capabilities which are provided by a communication component operation in accordance with the synchronization SyncML standard.